The Burial of the Dead, Chapter One
Title: The Burial of the Dead, Chapter One
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock (in absentia at this point), Molly, Greg, Mycroft, Mrs Hudson
Rating: PG?
Disclaimer: Certainly don't own the boys, but am borrowing them for a moment to play with them. Will return them unharmed!
Spoilers: The Reichenbach Fall
Summary: It's April, three months after Sherlock jumped of the roof of St Bartholomew's Hospital, and John Watson sits on a bench below it and thinks. He's a soldier who has seen war and carnage and blood, before. Today he has to stop mourning and make sense of it all.
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
The Wasteland - The Burial of The Dead
T.S Eliot
John looked at his watch. He knew was going to have to move in a moment but for the time being he stayed sitting down. It was easier on his leg like this, and today was one of the first days this spring when it was actually pleasant to sit still in the open air. He’d drink his coffee and then move off; the time was coming up on midday and the office workers around Smithfield and employees at St Bart's would be starting to fill the streets looking for lunch.
It wasn’t a good idea to be found hanging around here, where people who knew him, Molly or Mike Stamford, or some of the lab techs he knew from Sherlock’s time, could spot him. He was getting to have a bit of a reputation for hanging around the building his flatmate had fallen to his death from, and it wasn’t a good one.
Molly had actually caught John once in the early days, in February. She’d grabbed him out of the path of a number 56 bus (where he’d stood watching Sherlock fall was in fact where buses turned at the end of the cul-de-sac which was West Smithfield) and scolded him on standing out in the minus temperatures. A hurried mug of tea in Bart’s staff canteen had done nothing to warm him up.
‘Sherlock would never have wanted this,’ she had said with hard eyes.
‘Yes, well, he should have thought about that before he chucked himself off a bloody hospital roof shouldn’t he?’ John had muttered as he limped off.
Molly had been right about the cold though, it had done nothing for his leg and he had had to go home and soak long in the bath at 221B to stop the ache. After that he’d been more fleeting with his visits and more careful with his timing. He used the Rotunda Garden that sat above the subterranean car park for Smithfield Market. He could stand behind the War Memorial there and look at that lonely roof through the trees. It would be no good when the leaves unfurled later in the year, but for the time being it was fine.
Today, the first week in April, he was going to be well away from Bart's before Lunchtime however, so he was enjoying the freedom of being where he liked. He sat on the wooden bench, the first of the five that ran left to right on along the foot of the Pathology Building, and thought.
There was a new piece in the jigsaw puzzle that had become his life since his flatmate’s suicide and he had needed to come here to think. He’d been trying to calm his mind all morning, having woken out of a dream in which Sherlock was talking to him, trying to point something out, and John was still trying to remember what the dead man had said.
He needed to feel in touch with Sherlock, that was what Ella his counsellor had told him he needed on his most recent visit to her, so that was why he came here. It was no good going to Sherlock’s grave, that place might as well be in Wales as in the oddly named Old Paddington Cemetery that was actually in Kilburn. It was only a short ride via Abbey Road on the 189 bus from Baker Street, and then a short walk up Willesden Lane to visit the place where Sherlock wasn’t.
He’d not been invited to the funeral because there wasn’t one, and Mycroft had only told John where his brother was interred after the event. There was a headstone and grave in a wide lawn of grass, but that wasn’t where his flatmate’s heart was. That was why John always came back to Bart’s. Sitting on a seat, able to look up to where he had fallen from, his feet only a few inches from where Sherlock’s head had been lying when he’d walked round the bloody Ambulance Station which blocked his view.
He as a soldier who had seen war and carnage and blood before. Today he had to stop mourning and make sense of it all.
Author's Notes
As an ex-Londoner who knows the areas where the BBC have filmed far too well (and been a little frustated at how they muddle the geography) I decided I needed to write about the places as they are.
I admit I have inserted a suitable London based burial spot (Old Paddington Cemetery does exist and was used in Classic Dr Who for another not-burial) but it's nearer Baker Street than other options. The cemetery there is also only a few years younger than St Woolos in Newport where the episode was actually shot.
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock (in absentia at this point), Molly, Greg, Mycroft, Mrs Hudson
Rating: PG?
Disclaimer: Certainly don't own the boys, but am borrowing them for a moment to play with them. Will return them unharmed!
Spoilers: The Reichenbach Fall
Summary: It's April, three months after Sherlock jumped of the roof of St Bartholomew's Hospital, and John Watson sits on a bench below it and thinks. He's a soldier who has seen war and carnage and blood, before. Today he has to stop mourning and make sense of it all.
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
The Wasteland - The Burial of The Dead
T.S Eliot
John looked at his watch. He knew was going to have to move in a moment but for the time being he stayed sitting down. It was easier on his leg like this, and today was one of the first days this spring when it was actually pleasant to sit still in the open air. He’d drink his coffee and then move off; the time was coming up on midday and the office workers around Smithfield and employees at St Bart's would be starting to fill the streets looking for lunch.
It wasn’t a good idea to be found hanging around here, where people who knew him, Molly or Mike Stamford, or some of the lab techs he knew from Sherlock’s time, could spot him. He was getting to have a bit of a reputation for hanging around the building his flatmate had fallen to his death from, and it wasn’t a good one.
Molly had actually caught John once in the early days, in February. She’d grabbed him out of the path of a number 56 bus (where he’d stood watching Sherlock fall was in fact where buses turned at the end of the cul-de-sac which was West Smithfield) and scolded him on standing out in the minus temperatures. A hurried mug of tea in Bart’s staff canteen had done nothing to warm him up.
‘Sherlock would never have wanted this,’ she had said with hard eyes.
‘Yes, well, he should have thought about that before he chucked himself off a bloody hospital roof shouldn’t he?’ John had muttered as he limped off.
Molly had been right about the cold though, it had done nothing for his leg and he had had to go home and soak long in the bath at 221B to stop the ache. After that he’d been more fleeting with his visits and more careful with his timing. He used the Rotunda Garden that sat above the subterranean car park for Smithfield Market. He could stand behind the War Memorial there and look at that lonely roof through the trees. It would be no good when the leaves unfurled later in the year, but for the time being it was fine.
Today, the first week in April, he was going to be well away from Bart's before Lunchtime however, so he was enjoying the freedom of being where he liked. He sat on the wooden bench, the first of the five that ran left to right on along the foot of the Pathology Building, and thought.
There was a new piece in the jigsaw puzzle that had become his life since his flatmate’s suicide and he had needed to come here to think. He’d been trying to calm his mind all morning, having woken out of a dream in which Sherlock was talking to him, trying to point something out, and John was still trying to remember what the dead man had said.
He needed to feel in touch with Sherlock, that was what Ella his counsellor had told him he needed on his most recent visit to her, so that was why he came here. It was no good going to Sherlock’s grave, that place might as well be in Wales as in the oddly named Old Paddington Cemetery that was actually in Kilburn. It was only a short ride via Abbey Road on the 189 bus from Baker Street, and then a short walk up Willesden Lane to visit the place where Sherlock wasn’t.
He’d not been invited to the funeral because there wasn’t one, and Mycroft had only told John where his brother was interred after the event. There was a headstone and grave in a wide lawn of grass, but that wasn’t where his flatmate’s heart was. That was why John always came back to Bart’s. Sitting on a seat, able to look up to where he had fallen from, his feet only a few inches from where Sherlock’s head had been lying when he’d walked round the bloody Ambulance Station which blocked his view.
He as a soldier who had seen war and carnage and blood before. Today he had to stop mourning and make sense of it all.
Author's Notes
As an ex-Londoner who knows the areas where the BBC have filmed far too well (and been a little frustated at how they muddle the geography) I decided I needed to write about the places as they are.
I admit I have inserted a suitable London based burial spot (Old Paddington Cemetery does exist and was used in Classic Dr Who for another not-burial) but it's nearer Baker Street than other options. The cemetery there is also only a few years younger than St Woolos in Newport where the episode was actually shot.